Aurora
by Obsessed Lass
Summary: Soft glimpses in rose and gold. NaruSaku vignettes.
1. The Little Things Give You Away

The calloused fingers that graze his skin these days give her away.

Naruto is a certified dunce most of the time, but he's equally capable of picking up the most imperceptible signs of change in the behaviour of those closest to him. A childhood starved of simple human touch leaves him uncannily adept at translating the charades played by skin on skin that shinobi are particularly skilled at.

But then, Sakura has always been terribly transparent.

Naruto believes he understands the meaning conveyed by every graceful flutter, every veined clench, every single movement of those slender fingers. The dumb language of her touch registers on his senses like big bold letters drawn in sand. The affectionate punch of camraderie in the shoulder, the slightly annoyed bop on the head, the uninhibited right hook in the face stemming from pure aggravation: he could very well write a manual explaining those petite semaphores, ruthless, tender, precise all at once.

When he has almost resigned himself to the unchanging articulations of those gestures, Sakura surprises him. Not with crimson cheeks and coy smiles. It's the minute, muted signing of longing her fingers trace on his skin, perhaps unconsciously.

She plays with his hair more often, less distractedly these days, when they are lounging on the grass after a hearty spar. When he inevitably chokes while wolfing down steaming ramen down his throat at Ichiraku's, the pat on his back accompanied by the all too familiar noises of frustration becomes just a little bit softer. The glowing hands that heal injuries they inflicted only a moment before glide over his skin with more than mere concentration.

Her fingers are now strangely curious about an all too well known tattooed flesh.

Naruto wonders when she'll come to realize that she barely traced his whisker marks before, much less like she does now, so familiarly, so unthinkingly, as if it were a new way of breathing.

Naruto grins to himself. He will be as patient as a toad till Sakura-chan's heart clambered its way up to her mouth.

 _P.S. This is hopefully the first in a line of sweet little drabbles. Thoughts?_


	2. The Uzumaki Book of Courtship: i

"Conniving bastard," muttered Sakura, her eyes roaming over the wreckage of a room. Clothes haphazardly tossed all over the place, blunt kunai and sticky ramen cups protruding from the floor as if in some avant-garde display and worst of all, the mortal remains of a succulent she had given him hardly a month ago to liven up the place. How one managed to kill a zero-maintenance pet was completely beyond Sakura's comprehension.

Of late, Naruto had been asking her all too often to play housesitter in his absence. With her currently sequestered in the village to oversee the development of the new neuropsychiatric ward in the hospital, she had initially thought why not. But soon the requests became too frequent for her liking. And every time she complied, the same picture awaited her.

Namely, the puke of a tornado if a tornado was made of dirty underwear, rusty weapons and putrefying noodles.

It didn't take her long to realize that his teammate was practically using her as his personal maid service.

The idiot wasn't really the naive unsuspecting dreamer everyone thought he was. No, Sakura thought, as she battled with an unidentified sticky substance lodged in the cracks of the floor. No. Behind those stupid grins hid one diabolical creature! Naruto knew too well that she couldn't bear to remain in the close proximity of any brand of slovenliness, particularly one that had "Uzumaki" written all over it. Being a sucker for all things neat and organized, she won't be able to stop herself from tidying things up a bit. And when obsessive-compulsives like her cleaned just a "bit", the results resembled a freaking real estate commercial.

So that was how Sakura found herself sorting Naruto's kitchen cabinet, wardrobe and manga collection for the umpteenth time.

But what she couldn't understand was why she kept relenting all the damn time. Particularly when the idiot could somehow undo all her efforts in record time. How on earth could a spotlessly clean space transform into the aftermath of disaster so quickly?

Every time she came back, the floors would be coated with mysterious substances. Clothes and linens all dirty, the bookshelf in disarray and the kitchen... Kami, the kitchen morphed into a warzone. Even though she would have left it the last time she had been there as aesthetically arranged as possible, given Naruto's odd choice of utensils, including a coffee mug that was shaped like a toad having puckered lips. What exactly was the attraction of drinking something as if it was toad spit thoroughly eluded her.

The enigma that was Uzumaki Naruto. Sakura sighed.

Perhaps it was the prankster in him.

She didn't know why she kept saying yes. Or why she would sleep wearing his ugly old orange pyjamas dotted with green frogs whenever she was housesitting. "They are insanely comfortable," she would later tell an incredulous Ino after her best friend would discover a couple of those ratty nightwear tucked away in her closet, with a promise of unimaginable pain if that piece of information were to become public.

Years later, Sakura would blush prettily after decking Naruto when he would tell her that he loved it when his room smelled like Sakura-chan.


End file.
